[syslinux] booting using a specific hard drive configuration

[Roman Kudinov]

Hi All,

I have two hard drives of the following configuration

-------------------------
|     |                  |
| MBR |  WINDOWS         | - active hard drive
|     |                  |
-------------------------

---------------------------------
|     |       |                  |
| N/A | EMPTY | LINUX            | - non active hard drive but I want to boot LINUX from it
|     |       | (logical volume  |
---------------------------------


I have a Linux image saved in a logical volume of a non-active hard
drive. I have installed syslinux for this volume and have a custom MBR
code installed on the active drive. This MBR code should load boot
sector (ldlinux.sys I believe) from the LINUX volume and execute it.
Everything works fine when this operates on a single hard drive, but
when I have MBR on one hard drive and linux image with installed
syslinux at another hard drive then I get a error "boot failed". As
far as I understand it is printed by ldlinux.sys. What can be the
reason?

Does SYSLINUX use information from MBR, e.g. does it check if it is
loaded from active partition?

Can SYSLINUX load from non-active HDD in case it is loaded by a custom
MBR code?


-- 
Roman Kudinov


mailto:krandv at rbcmail.ru